Velika Gorica lies just outside of the Croatian capital of Zagreb, and while you might think very little of this town when passing through, which is the only thing most people actually do, things aren't always as they seem, economically speaking, anyway.

While it's true that most people from Velika Gorica earning their money in nearby Zagreb, it would appears that net salaries are, on average, higher than they are in the heart of the capital city.

As Poslovni Dnevnik writes on the 8th of November, 2018, over recent months, Velika Gorica has been mentioned in the media mostly because of the brilliant results of their football team, but after some likely surprising data published by the Financial Agency (FINA) there are more reasons for satisfaction in that otherwise all but entirely overlooked town.

Namely, Velika Gorica comes first in the whole of the Republic of Croatia when it comes to the average salaries of workers and their respective productivity. Net salaries are on average higher than the average salaries in both Zagreb and Rijeka, two large cities, reports RTL.

As previously stated, most people living in Velika Gorica earn their wages in Zagreb, but the close proximity of the country's capital city, the close proximity of Zagreb's Franjo Tudjman International Airport, and the apparently quick administration are some huge advantages for this town, which boasts more than sixty thousand permanent inhabitants. The Lidl chain, which is recording enviable traffic in billions of kuna, also has its headquarters here, and the arrival of the well-respected and very powerful Atlantic Group has also been recently announced.

In addition, as RTL reports, Croatian Post (Hrvatska Pošta) will also have its headquarters and logistics center in Velika Gorica. Croatian Post justified this move with the fact that this location is a strategically important place for the continued development and the improving of shipment processes, as Velika Gorica is very close to the Franjo Tudjman Airport, not far from the Zagreb - Sisak motorway, and the Zagreb - Velika Gorica fast road.

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An economic boost could well be on the cards for Croatian tourism as one of the country's most successful companies within that sector raises employee wages and aims for further expansion for 2019's tourist season.

As Poslovni Dnevnik writes on the 5th of November, 2018, after a successful seaso, one of the most successful tourist companies in Croatia, the Jadranka Group from Lošinj, is investing in the salaries of its employees and is looking for reinforcements for next season.

Jadranka Group's education program includes in-house workshops, theoretical lectures and practical training. Among them, the Gastro Academy stands out, and employees are encouraged to focus on improving the skills needed for high-level service at a five-star level.

With internal education, employees have the opportunity to expand their knowledge and skills and thus attend specialised programs held in external institutions for highly specialised professions such as those in concierge and bartending, to name a couple. Therefore, it comes as no real surprise that in Jadranka hotels, the daughter company of the Jadranka Group, the number of employees has doubled since 2009.

"We believe that salary increases are a logical step in developing the group's business and employee relationships, which are key factors for successful business operations. In the hotel and camping industry, we're constantly increasing from year to year so that along with the improvement of living and working conditions, we give a kind of acknowledgment and gratitude to our employees for our collective success. In addition, this year, we've increased the basic salaries in our commercial sector, for retail, wholesale and food production,'' said Sanjin Šolić, the CEO of the Jadranka Group, who celebrated 30 years of work in Jadranka last year.

When speaking about an economic boost, raising salaries and improving employee conditions come above all else.

Mr. Solić emphasised that one of the group's priorities is to ensure the proper conditions for seasonal employees as soon as possible. With this aim, the raising of the level of the tourist facilities to a four-star level began, in a move which will provide the employees with adequate accommodation and ensure much more enjoyable living conditions during their stay and time spent working there in Lošinj.

Jadranka Group's good attitude towards their seasonal workers speaks volumes in support of the fact that the group is by far one of the most desirable employers on the Croatian coast and islands.

In a further economic boost for the workers and the company, at the end of the season, they offer those workers a type of permanent status, which is a guaranteed job for the next year, as well as all of the rights enjoyed by permanent employees. Jadranka Group employs some 700 permanent employees, while during the tourist season the total number of employees stands at about 1,600, a large number of those employees are deployed in the group's daughters-businesses.

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Does the Zagreb-based Hendal agency's survey reveal anything new?

A lot can be said of the Croatian domestic economic situation, and even more can be said about the level of young people leaving the country in their droves in search of higher standards, more job security and a better wage in other European countries, with those further west like Germany, Ireland and the United Kingdom among the most attractive of all.

Potential staff can't find employers, and potential employers can't find staff. It's a bit like Where's Waldo but with serious consequences. As the buses and planes continue to leave and the situation gets more and more pressing, it's difficult to know just how one can manage to get to the raw truth lying behind the sensational journalism, the shocking headlines and the apparently welcome trends of negativity.

The situation is a dire one, and it shows no immediate signs of recovery, or does it?

As Lucija Spiljak/Poslovni Dnevnik writes on the 7th of November, 2018, the Hendal market research agency, based in the Croatian capital of Zagreb, explored the habits of young people for the very first time in the Republic of Croatia.

The Zagreb-based Hendal agency has been investigating the habits and attitudes of the country's 25-year-olds. The first such survey conducted by the research agency here in Croatia shows that as many as 56.8 percent of the respondents do work, 25.9 percent are in some sort of education, and just 16 percent of those contacted are unemployed or seeking a job.

58.7 percent of young people are currently working in some sort of profession, and 21.7 percent claim that they aren't working in what would be termed as a profession by their own choice. Those people are budding entrepreneurs, and explain that they're taking that route in particular because as many as 50 percent of them are seriously considering starting their own business, while only 16 percent of them say they're definitely going to leave Croatia.

Croatia's young people, according to Hendal's research, aren't interested in politics, although 48.8 percent of them confirm that they do always go to the polls to vote.

Hendal's research reveals that most of them spend their free time cooking more than going out, encouragingly, most do not smoke, and in a somewhat lighter survey, 47.5 percent of them would choose to take their phones with them should they end up on a desert island, with more than six hours a day spent using a phone spent by 42.6 percent of the respondents.

Today, young people up to 25 years of age, of which there are about 49,000, don't see property and real estate as a priority.

Only 28.4 percent of them are sure they'll marry, and children are eventually planned by 69.8 percent of young people in Croatia.

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Click here for the original article by Lucija Spiljak for Poslovni Dnevnik

One Croatian company is putting its money where its mouth is and making sure the current staff shortage issue facing many employers across the countery doesn't affect them. The company in question has been offering employees the deeply desired security of a permanent contract, and raising their base wages by as much as 20 percent.

The economic situation in Croatia is an unusual one. On the one hand, it's difficult to find a job, on the other hand, it's difficult for employers to find staff. While in theory the solution is simple, actually combatting and trying to find an effective remedy to such a bizarre situation can be difficult for some, but one Croatian company has quickly realised what needs to be done, and that is to offer the European standard to Croatian workers. They're even planning on expanding their business and recruiting more staff in the future.

As Poslovni Dnevnik writes on the 6th of November, 2018, Croatia's leading combine harvester production plant located in Županja, Slavonia, has managed to successfully tackle and avoid the now all too common problem of finding properly skilled workers and losing existing workers, according to a report from HRT.

The company owners gave their seasonal workers permanent jobs and increased their salaries by as much as 20 percent to make sure they're satisfied with their positions. Almost all of their production is exported, and their combine harvesters are searched for across Europe.

The production of a modern combine harvester takes 1,000 hours of work, and at the Same Deutz-Fahr Žetelice factory, they make up to three per day, as Josip Lenić, the head of manufacturing engineering at the factory, explained to HRT.

While many employers up and down Croatia are becoming increasingly burdened by their workers leaving to find positions elsewhere and abroad, this Slavonian company has avoided this issue. This year, they employed 54 workers permanently, and then raised their salaries.

The Županja-based combine harvester production plant exports its goods to almost all European countries, and, as stated, in the future they're planning on expanding the business and recruiting yet more staff.

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Croatia is a paradoxical country in many senses, and that is a sentence that has been written many times over the years. Paradoxes can be seen across all spectrums of society, and when it comes to the Croatian economy, the paradoxes are enough to make one scratch ones head. 

You'll hear one (or more) of any of these things in relation to the Croatian economy: There are no jobs. There are jobs but the pay isn't enough. We can't find the staff. We're willing to give the staff good wages, food, accommodation and a decent amount of time off. We've got many jobs available but nobody wants to work. I can't find a job and I'll do anything... but not that (as Meatloaf might have said had he been searching for work in Croatia).

You get the point. Sadly it appears that this situation isn't one that is about to remedy itself anytime soon.

As Ljubica Gataric/VL/Poslovni Dnevnik writes on the 5th of November, 2018, migration can indeed go in both directions, but at the minute, Croatia's labour force is taking advantage of the EU's freedom of movement policy and heading abroad in search of better lives, better wages, more security and more opportunities, and only recently has the the import of workers from elsewhere to Croatia been discussed. But why would they come?

With the absence of young workers becoming an ever-increasing problem, domestic and foreign companies and institutions operating in the country are turning to the older population more and more to try to keep the Croatian economy afloat. The numbers are intractable and show that over the past ten years, Croatia has lost about 127,000 young people aged up to 29, corresponding to the population of an entire city, such as Rijeka.

Such a reduction in the number of young people has naturally seen the domestic labour market suffer, causing a dramatic shift in the age structure of employed workers. In ten years, which means long before Croatia joined the European Union, the number of employed persons in Croatia decreased by 122,419, measured by the number of insured persons registered in pension insurance, according to Vecernji list.

Most of this loss relates to the group of young workers aged up to 29 years, of whom there were 104,000 less employed at the end of 2017 than when compared to a decade ago, in 2007.

The remaining deficiency for the Croatian economy is in the next age group of workers aged between 30 and 34 years.

After the Croatian economy emerged from the recession, four years ago, the total number of insured persons increased by 95,000 to approximately 1.45 million. But, as Darko Orčić, an analyst at the Employment Service, recalls, the number of employees in the age group of 25 to 34 is still very much declining.

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Click here for the original article by Ljubica Gataric/VL on Poslovni Dnevnik

Money isn't something most people are usually that willing to openly discuss, but there are times when one needs to look at the situation and see what can be improved. Who better to do that than the tax administration?

As Poslovni Dnevnik writes on the 1st of November, 2018, while these figures don't reveal the amount of people in Croatia working ''on the black'', according to the tax administration's data reveal, more than half of the country's registered employees, all 847,750 of them, are grouped into categories with monthly net wages of 2,500 to 5,500 kuna.

According to the information provided, the average monthly net wage per person in employment in legal entities in the Republic of Croatia for August 2018 was 6,264 kuna, which is nominally 0.9 percent more than it was in comparison with just one month previously, in July 2018, the Central Bureau of Statistics reported.

The question of just how many people actually do receive this so-called average salary is a pressing one, and the data from the country's tax administration for the past year has now revealed the answer. They published a table of employee structures in 32 categories of net income for the year 2017.

A net salary of between 6,001 to 6,500 kuna seems to be being received by a total of 86,985 people in Croatia, out of a total of 1,592,215 registered employees across the country, according to a report from Novi list.

The tax administration reports that as many as 1,166,731 employees are receiving a salary lower than the average, and as a result of that, more than half of the country's employees, 847,750 of them, are grouped into categories with monthly net wages of 2,500 to 5,500 kuna.

It appears from the provided data that less than 300,000 employees in the entire country have ''take home'' net salaries in the amount of 9,001 to 14,000 kuna per month.

As far as very high salaries are concerned, 269 employees take home more than 100,000 kuna per month, 921 salaries are between 50,001 to 100,000 kuna, and just 789 are from 40,001 to 50,000 kuna per month.

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